U.S. crushes ivory to save elephants from extinction

This week, the Obama administration will take its most visible step in its campaign to stop the slaughter of African elephants, crushing six tons of ivory in Denver Thursday. Last July, Obama established a Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking composed of the State, Interior and Justice departments to develop a strategy to stop what is described as industrial-scale poaching that has slashed the African elephant population by two thirds in a decade.

Elephants and rhinos are fast approaching extinction as a result of severe population pressures, climate change and a booming Asian trade in ivory, fueled in part by terrorist organizations such as Al Shabab, the group that attacked a Kenya mall this year. Al Shabab derives as much as 40 percent of its funds from elephant poaching, according to a 2011 report by the Elephant Action League.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that 30,000 elephants are slaughtered each year, even as their habitat shrinks drastically. The NGO Environmental Investigation Agency said the main culprit is “soaring demand from Chinese and Japanese consumers for carved ivory trinkets and personal name seals.”

The ivory crush in Denver, which was temporarily postponed by the government shutdown, is intended to “send a message to ivory traffickers and their customers that the United States will not tolerate this illegal trade.”

The conservative Property and Environment Research Center argued in the Denver Post that destroying the ivory is counterproductive because it “creates a perception of increasing scarcity” that drives prices higher. The Environmental Investigation Agency counters that elephant populations began to recover after a 1989 ban until a one-time sale was permitted in 1999. EIA contends the sale and “so-called regulated ivory markets…have only served to increase demand and the poaching it fuels.” The $10 billion ivory market is the third largest smuggled-goods market in the world after drugs and human trafficking.

The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg reported Sunday that the U.S. stockpile, seized by customs officials at airports and ship cargo ports, consists of six tons of “scarred tusks, glossy Confucius statuettes with $10,000 price stickers, coffee table items, and too many chunky cuff bracelets to count,” representing “millions of dollars and the slaughter of thousands of African elephants.”